


She Follows Me Into The Woods

by spockandawe



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Canon Divergence, Character Death Fix, F/M, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:41:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21897595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spockandawe/pseuds/spockandawe
Summary: They reach an impasse.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 5
Kudos: 37





	She Follows Me Into The Woods

They reach an impasse.

At first his hand hovers over her chest, and hers in front of his, but as the seconds pass and the fatigue sinks into them both, that distance closes. Rey knows her hand is pressed to his stomach now, awkwardly trapped between the two of them. And now she can feel his hand flat against her sternum, his fingertips resting just over her collarbone.

“Just let me do this,” he says. He still has one arm around her back, holding her steady, but he’s beginning to slump forward over her now and sways faintly with exhaustion. She wants to take some of his weight, to support him, but to do that she would have to move her hand away. And she’s afraid to do that right now.

“I’m not stopping you from doing anything,” she says. Mumbles. She’s never been healed this way before. She hadn’t realized at first what the sensation was, what it  _ meant.  _ But she knows what it feels like to heal someone else this way, how draining it is, even at the best of times. So right now, everything he pushes into her, she’s sending back into him. She’s fairly certain that it’s the only thing still keeping him alive.

“You know what I mean.” 

Rey does know. She just… disagrees. When she came to Exegol, she didn’t really expect to walk away. And after all this, after  _ everything,  _ if she walks away alone— If she gives up right now, and walks away alone, what was the point?

“Ben,” she pleads.

That makes him waver.

They limp back towards their ships, together, and perhaps neither of them is doing particularly well, but neither of them is  _ dead,  _ and that’s all she cares about right now. They’re moving slowly, leaning into each other to stay upright. His arm is around her shoulders and hers is around his waist. When they pass the bodies Ben left behind as he came in, Rey hesitates for a moment, and asks, “Medpacks?”

He pauses too, but shakes his head. “Not them. Back at my ship, though. I have the basics.”

So does the X-wing, when she thinks to look. Neither of them has much, but there are bacta patches for the worst of their injuries and stim-packs that aren’t as strong as she wishes, but wake her up enough that Rey feels  _ capable  _ of navigating through the Unknown Regions and back into the Outer Rim.

When Ben moves to climb into his TIE fighter, she stops him. “Let me. You take the X-wing. Things are going to be tense, back at the base. I’ll get on comms as soon as we’re in range, and then they won’t shoot you out of the sky.”

“Back at the base.” He’s frowning now, looking at the ship, and not her, and suddenly she realizes that she’d only assumed— 

“Come with me,” she says, and she isn’t sure whether she’s asking him or not.

But he doesn’t act like it was a question. He still doesn’t look at her, but he nods once, jerkily, still with his eyes locked on his ship.

She wishes that either of the ships was large enough to hold them both. The fight might be over, but things still feel fragile, and it’s dangerous in a way that she doesn’t know how to fight. She doesn’t like having this much separation between them until she  _ understands  _ what’s happening a little better. Still, even when there’s hard vacuum between them, she can still feel Ben close enough that they might as well be in the same room, and their ships navigate the path through the Unknown Regions in more perfect sync than simple piloting can justify.

Talking her way through getting them both landing clearance is a good distraction. Nobody especially wants to give official permission for Kylo Ren to land at the rebellion’s headquarters, but he shadows her so closely that nobody planetside would be able to get a clear shot at him, and she should have the authority to override… most people, really, but it does help when General Poe Dameron apparently gets impatient waiting for her and barges into the command center to clear their two ships for landing.

When Ben climbs out of the X-wing, he frowns back at the cockpit. “That ship…”

She hesitates. It wouldn’t have mattered to her, so it hadn’t occurred to her that it might matter to him. “It was Luke’s.”

“Mm.” He doesn’t say anything else, and doesn’t look… especially upset, but he keeps frowning at the X-wing.

Rey wants to ask him more questions about that, but by then friends have started arriving at a run, and pulling up short as soon as they recognize the person standing there with her. She’s caught up in a confusing whirlwind of congratulations and attempted explanations and general noisy celebration, and Ben slips back far enough to lean against the side of his ship with his arms crossed tight against his chest. She thinks that might be the main thing keeping him upright at the moment. He doesn’t speak up, only watches what’s happening with a sardonic expression.

Fortunately, most of those people have other jobs they need to be doing, and they don’t stay for long. Which is good, because she isn’t sure she’s provided a single coherent explanation yet. Chewie arrives, and exchanges a long look with Ben. Rey winces, a bit, and tries to brace herself to intervene. But neither of them say a word, and then, Finn and Poe have arrived. They don’t hesitate, just run straight to her, and then Chewie turns to them and puts his arms around them all. For now, even if it’s just for a moment, Rey just lets herself surrender to the crushing hug, and buries her face in Finn’s shoulder. 

It can’t last, of course. They have plenty of work to keep them busy, and she has a… guest? Prisoner? It’s clear that some of the rebellion officers very much  _ want _ to treat Ben as a prisoner, and if they weren’t already so short on space, someone would have probably worked out some sort of jail for him already.

Rey… doesn’t have the patience for that. She doesn’t know how long she’ll be able to make herself stay here, with everyone else, but it won’t be for long. And she won’t leave without Ben. After the base medics see to them, he follows her through the facility, his expression flat, his body language not quite hostile. Rey isn’t thinking too closely about where she’s going until she finds herself outside of Leia’s quarters.

He realizes before she can find the words to tell him. He exhales, sharply, and doesn’t quite wince. He doesn’t say anything, but the look he gives her isn’t happy.

Rey says, “She would have wanted you here.”

Ben doesn’t look any happier hearing that, but he still follows her inside. He stands in the center of the room without looking around. She doesn’t know what he’s sensing, seeing, any of it. She doesn’t need to. She steps up beside him and places one hand on the small of his back. Even though his shirt, it’s clear how tense he is. He doesn’t react to her touch, only stands motionless, breathing shallowly, until finally he turns sharply and stalks back out the door.

She follows him out, closing the door behind her, and doesn’t speak to him. She touches his arm, once, and from the corner of her eye she sees him look down at her. But he doesn’t say a word, and she doesn’t want to break the silence herself. They stand there like that for a long moment, until she sees him relax in some almost imperceptible way, and then she leads him off through the facility again.

Rey leaves as soon as she’s able, in the end. It still takes longer than she wants. She’s lived here for a long time, but the weight of all the people around her is heavier than it’s been in months, and it’s difficult to wait to leave with permission, instead of taking a ship and slipping away in the night.

Poe is off planet, but Finn comes to see her one last time before she goes. Ben sits in the corner of the room, while he and Finn pretend they can’t see each other. 

Finn hugs her tight and says, “We’re going to miss you.”

“I’m going to miss you too,” she says.

“You should come back soon, to visit. Or maybe we can visit you? Actually, we should set up plans to call each other, and then we can use that to plan those visits—” 

_ “Finn.”  _ Rey puts her hand on his shoulders and pushes him back. He’s smiling, and she can’t help smiling back. “I’m never going to be that far away. I might not have the Falcon, but our ship is fast enough. It has a hyperdrive. It’ll be fine.”

_ Our.  _ She realizes her mistake when his smile fades slightly. “And you’re really, really… sure?”

“Yes,” she says firmly, with no hesitation. 

Finn still hesitates for a moment longer, but shakes his head and sighs, and then smiles again. “Right, right. I’ll stop asking. And, um. Before you go. I’ve, uh, been trying to ask you about this for a while, but there hasn’t been a good time—” 

The only way he’ll say it is by whispering it in her ear. And when he finally spits it out— Rey tries to whisper back to him, but it’s a struggle to keep her voice down when she’s trying so hard not to burst into delighted laughter. “What makes you think I’d know how to propose to someone? Ask Chewie about it, not me!”

Finn winces and rubs his forehead. “I tried, honest, but he thought I should try a romantic kidnapping, so I’m pretty sure he’s just messing with me.  _ Mostly  _ sure.”

After he says his last goodbyes and leaves, Rey turns around to see Ben watching her with his eyebrows raised. “What?” He just keeps watching her. She frowns at him. “Please. I  _ refuse _ to believe that you know any more about this than I do.”

He doesn’t say anything to that, but he doesn’t say very much in general these days. Rey is fairly sure he spoke to her more back when she was still perfectly ready to kill him. She’s hoping that getting away from the base will help with that. Just the lack of solitude is grating on her, and she thinks it might be similar for him as well. And Leia’s presence—and the absence of her presence—hang over the base like a cloud, and she needs to get into the open air so she can navigate her own emotions without being suffocated by everyone else’s.

She doesn’t raise the subject directly with Ben, but she can feel him relax once they’re off the planet and back in deep space. The shuttle she bought isn’t large, but it has enough room for two people to live comfortably. She doesn’t have many plans of her own, not at first. And she’s fairly sure Ben has fewer plans than she does. But she has Luke and Leia’s lightsabers with her, and as they sit in her quarters, an idea does begin to occur to her.

When she asks Ben about how to build a lightsaber, he answers her. She has the old books with her still, but there’s more to  _ knowing  _ than just reading books. Ben has been through the process before, and can describe the steps and answer her questions in a way that the books can’t. After several days of questions, he’s the one to bring up a galactic map and point out the location of Ilum, and to describe the planet’s cave networks and kyber crystal deposits.

It’s a long trip into the Unknown Regions. When they reach Ilum, Rey can see the planet is clearly unstable, and still visibly damaged from the mining the Empire did for the Death Star. But when Ben guides the ship to the old Jedi Temple, the buildings are still intact. There’s nobody there except for the two of them, and Rey can’t help being aware of how good it feels to breathe planetary air without feeling the presence of so many other people around her, constantly,  _ inescapably. _ She wishes it wasn’t so cold, perhaps, but it still lets her relax in a way you hadn’t realized she missed.

And— When she goes into the caves to look for a kyber crystal, Ben comes with her. At first he doesn’t have any plans to look for a crystal of his own. When she asks, he tells her that he doesn’t need—or want—a lightsaber. She’s less surprised than he is when a crystal calls to him, and she watches it turn to a bright, clear blue in his hand. It isn’t long after that before she finds a crystal of her own, and when they leave the planet, they each leave with a new lightsaber of their own.

After that, Rey suggests they go to Tatooine. And perhaps stay. For a while. When she mentions the planet, she knows Ben must realize why she would want to visit. But he doesn’t react, only asks, “Living in the desert?”

She shrugs. “I like the desert. It’s comfortable.”

He lifts his eyebrows. “You have an interesting definition of ‘comfortable.’”

That’s the closest he comes to objecting. He sits beside her and watches without saying a word as she brings up the coordinates for the old Lars moisture farm and brings their shuttle in to land there. The buildings are still standing, and the home seems empty, as far as she can tell. The sand has piled up inside, with nobody around to clean it out, but that’s a small chore. 

The suns are beginning to set by then, but the sand still radiates a comfortable amount of heat. Perhaps slightly more than a comfortable amount, for Ben. He’s gone inside, wandering through the empty rooms. She can’t tell if that’s the temperature, or if he wants some time alone in the space. She can give him that, easily enough. Instead she decides to tinker with the moisture farm’s vaporators. They don’t run, not after so long, but Rey thinks she can bring at least one up with an hour or two of work, and have the others running within a few days. 

This could be a nice place to live. It’s an easy flight to the city, and this home is luxurious compared to what she’s used to. The desert isn’t uninhabited, she could see that when she flew in, but there aren’t any other homes immediately within sight, just wide open expanses of sand. There aren’t any shipwrecks around to scavenge, but she can find other ways to pass the time, and she’s almost certain the moisture farm can make them enough money to live on. It would be… comfortable to live here, she thinks.

When Ben finally comes out to join her again, he’s left his things inside. They haven’t had this conversation, but it’s enough of an answer, for now. She touches him once on the shoulder and goes inside to unload her own pack. She doesn’t have many belongings, but the pair of lightsabers that she and Ben inherited are among them. Her own lightsaber is a familiar weight at her hip, and Ben has his own.

After a moment’s thought, she takes Luke and Leia’s lightsabers, wraps them carefully in a cloth, and carries them back outside to Ben. She holds them out, and he reaches for them instinctively, for a moment, before he stops himself. They exchange a wordless look, and he shrugs. 

“We’ll know where to find them if we need them,” he says.

He’s right. It isn’t difficult to bury the lightsabers in the sand beside the house, deep enough nobody will stumble across them accidentally, but shallow enough she or Ben will be able to retrieve them if needed. He comes to stand beside her as she works, watching the cloth bundle sink into the ground, then watching the sand settling back into place above it.

When they turn around, a woman is watching them. She says, “This place has been empty for a long time.”

She’s not wrong. Rey says, “It’s not empty now.”

She nods slowly, still studying them. “Who are you?”

It’s— not a difficult question, but for a moment, Rey’s unsure how to answer. She glances at Ben just as he looks at her. There’s silence for an uncomfortable moment, because they haven’t discussed this before, and  _ can’t  _ discuss this right now. But then he looks back to the woman and says, “Ben Solo.”

Rey reaches out to touch his hip. He doesn’t say anything, but she can feel his weight shift, just a little closer to her. 

The woman nods again and says, “And you?”

“Rey.” She looks up at Ben again. He’s watching her from the corner of his eye, and he doesn’t say anything, but she can see him very faintly smile. She smiles back at him, and says, “Rey Skywalker.”


End file.
